


Notes on Middle-Earth

by Dialux



Series: i chose to walk these paths [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: A place to stash headcanons in this fandom, F/F, F/M, M/M, Notes/Dictionary, idk if even forty percent is correct though, oh my god there's so much research here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:02:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7457206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A list of headcanons for the Hobbit fandom, and more specifically the story 'this is a love i cannot undo.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notes on Middle-Earth

**Author's Note:**

> First off, massive spoilers. Don't read it if you don't want spoilers. Don't read it if you don't want spoilers to fics I haven't even written yet.
> 
> In fact, don't read it if you're bothered by this kind of stuff. You'll feel pretty miserable.
> 
> That said, here's the goddamn list of headcanons that's been plaguing me for half a year. Hopefully you can make some sort of sense out of it.

**I. VAGUE TIMELINE:**

\- Beginning of First Age: Durin awakes alone in Gundabad. He travels for many years while the other six Fathers are carving their halls. He finally comes to Khazad-dum, and he begins work there. He asks for help, but the other dwarven clans refuse.

\- End of First Age: Durin’s heir reigns over Khazad-dûm from Erebor, and doesn’t aid the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost as their homes are destroyed in the War of Wrath.

\- End of First Age: Firla Flamesword, last of the Firebeards, curses the Line of Durin with gold-madness; she places the weight of the deaths of her people on the king of Erebor. ~a century later, Durin’s heir’s heir asks for a cure, and it is granted through the queens of Erebor.

\- Second Age: Stone-singers revolt against the reigning king of Khazad-dûm, and set up their own rule.

\- Second Age: Durin III, wielding one of the Seven Rings, takes back Khazad-dûm and slaughters the stone-singers. The other clans sign the _Treaty of Stone,_ swearing to kill every stone-singer they find and binding their heirs to it as well.

\- Third Age, 2589: Thror’s father dies in a cold-drake attack on a visit to Ered Mithrin. (Note: This diverges from canon, where Erebor was unoccupied until Thror’s arrival and is only colonized because Dain I, Thror’s father, dies in an attack on Ered Mithrin.)

\- Third Age, 2594: Thror attempts an _ishmerafran’amrab_ with the love of his life, and she is struck down by Mahal. Furious, Thror vows never to attempt such a ceremony again and instead starts a ceremony of _ishmerafran’mudtul_ for his heirs. He burns all documents of _ishmerafran’amrab,_ and knowledge of the _khi’zagr_ of the line of Durin is gone. Thror falls into gold-madness.

\- Third Age, 2770: Smaug attacks Erebor.

\- Third Age, c. 2880: Smaug lays a dragon-curse on the gold of Erebor when some number of Iron Hill dwarves attempt to take back the mountain. Gandalf and Thranduil undo this curse immediately after the BOFTA.

\- Third Age, 2941: Thorin Oakenshield and Co. take back Erebor.

\- Third Age, 2942: THIS ENTIRE DAMN STORY TAKES PLACE.

 

**II. HEADCANONS ON SEXUALITY IN MIDDLE-EARTH:**

\- Dwarves are, mostly, bisexual biromantics; however, some are aromantic asexuals, and those follow the path of the forge, called _Khabbûna_ (for women, _Khabbûn_ for men), literally meaning forge-lady or forge-man. They are wed to their craft, and stay with it.

\- Romantic asexuals are not covered by the path of _Khabbûna._ This is why Sifa and Fili have their conversation, and Sifa says she doesn’t want to be alone.

\- Firla and Aralis are a cross-species lesbian couple.

\- Genderfluidity is not common among dwarves. (“You are a product of the Maker, and shall be glad to have this body!”)

\- Elves are, mostly, demiromantic heterosexuals, and gender itself is ill-defined. (Legolas is bisexual. Tauriel is demisexual.)

\- Hobbits are, mostly, bisexual biromantics with genderfluidity being… more defined than elves but less strict than either dwarves or men.

 

**III. HEADCANONS ON SIFA, DAUGHTER OF GLIFA, HEIR OF FERYA:**

\- Name is derived from Sif, the earth-goddess of Norse mythology.

\- In dwarven law, three _anaburhel_ (warnings-of-all-warnings) are required to ensure that, even if someone raises sword to one’s family, they are not called Kinslayer. ( _Anaburhel_ are warnings stated from the heart, warning the family you’ll raise a sword to of your intentions. By doing this thrice and only then telling Thorin of what her father would do, Sifa is not a Kinslayer.)

\- Sifa’s mother- Glifa- is Blacklock royalty that did not have contact with her family for as long as she lived with her husband. After her husband was banished, she became very depressed and Sifa, unable to take care of her, sent her to live with her family and so they no longer have contact.

\- Blacklocks live in the southern parts of the Red Mountains, and most have bone-structure corresponding to South-Caucasians in our world (think Turkish). As a result, Sifa’s a mix of such a mother and a paler-skinned father.

\- Dis did not know that Sifa had given her father _anaburhel,_ and Sifa herself did not know the definitions of Kinslaying when she said them. Mainly, their relationship is built in misunderstandings.

 

**IV: HEADCANONS ON TAURIEL, DAUGHTER OF RANDAER AND TIRNEL:**

\- Randaer means _wanderer,_ and Tirnel means _star-watcher._ They are Silvan elves from a northern Mirkwood city, and went travelling when Tauriel was twelve. Three years later they were caught by the giant spiders of Mirkwood.

\- The King of the Mirkwood Spiders (Rarachnor [derived from Greek, _Arachne_ ]) kills and eats Tirnel right away, and keeps Randaer alive- Randaer dies from the grief and Tauriel is left alone. She escapes, and returns a century later to kill Rarachnor.

\- “Elves, in their twenties, might appear seven but have the abilities of an adult.” - a paraphrase from Tolkien Gateway. Tauriel is, mentally, an adult, but physically younger when her parents die.

\- She sets out to kill Rarachnor when she is 100 years old, and takes fifteen years to do so. After that, she settles into Mirkwood and becomes Captain of the Guard, and helps Legolas drive the spiders back.

 

**V: HEADCANONS ON FIRLA FLAMESWORD, LAST OF THE FIREBEARDS:**

\- She was minor nobility in the Firebeard clan, before Nogrod/Belegost were destroyed in the War of Wrath.

\- As her family either died or swore loyalty to other clans, she gained more and more influence.

\- She was training as a stone-singer and just finished initial training when her home was destroyed. She just turned forty-three, which means she’s the equivalent of a nineteen-year old human: old enough to be considered an adult, still _young._

\- After she places the curse on Durin’s line she travels the world, exploring and fighting where necessary. About a century after she places the curse, Durin’s heir’s heir finds her and asks for a cure, which she offers in the form of the _ishmerafran’amrab._

\- She meets Aralis a few years after that and settles down in Rohan. Forty years later, Firla dies. In Valinor, she and Aralis live in a place that is not quite the Halls of Mahal, or the home of the humans. They are not quite in Valinor, either.

\- She got the title ‘Flamesword’ because her trademark was stone-singing flames around her sword in battle.

 

**VI: HEADCANONS ON DWARVEN TRADITIONS:**

**General:**

\- Tolkien said the entire universe of Middle-Earth was formed by Eru Illuvatar’s initial song, and Melkor was the disruptor of that melody. In the First Age, the elves fight against Melkor through song. In this AU, dwarves have the same power, only theirs is dependent on the experience and weight of where they are- their power comes from the earth that previous dwarves have given their lives to.

\- Once a dwarf is bearded- which means they are branded on the side of the neck- they are not welcomed in any dwarf-hall and are considered dead.

\- Orc bones are used as beads. Two beads means blooded warrior, and one bead means ‘survived a battle, though they didn’t actually kill anything.’

\- Tradition for kin-mourning is to shave your beard/head, but the tradition for mourning lovers or blood-brothers is to carry only unpaired weaponry, be it knives or swords or axes.

\- Sworn dwarf lords/ladies can taste lies of their subjects. This is why, when Sifa speaks to Thorin, she’s always very, very careful to speak only the truth. Caveats to this include that it only refers to the strictest truth; lies of omission are not counted. Only applies to sworn subjects. If subject A is sworn to Lord B, Lord C cannot taste the lie. Because Thorin is the King, all lords are sworn to him; as a result, he can taste the lies of everyone liegesworn. Yes, this is the reason why people who have no oaths (usually, the poor) are looked down upon by the upper classes; the lords have no way of knowing them whether to be truthful or not, and this frightens them.

I am way too invested in dwarven classism in a universe where the only problem is one I created _myself._

\- Dwarves believe swords and axes to be traditionally masculine weaponry, used by warriors in attacking; knives and spears are traditionally feminine, and are used primarily for defense.

\- Were Kili to leave Erebor, it implies he didn’t find his Uncle’s reign acceptable.

\- The Arkenstone bestows the right to rule Erebor as established by Thror.

\- Ceremony of representative combat is used for when two kings don’t want to do battle with armies and instead call for a single person who represents the entire army. The winner is considered the winner of a decisive battle. There are caveats to this: those who issue the challenge are the ones who pick the representative second; the representatives cannot be blood-relations; there are no seconds in the battle.

\- Ceremony of equal reparations requires stone-singing, and so was lost to the dwarves after the _Treaty of Stone_ was signed.  Used to answer curses. Life for a life, death for a death, and such; before the _Treaty of Stone,_ used for thieving (you stole seven gold pieces, you must give seven gold pieces back), etc.

\- Names of Valar used in the _ishmerafran’amrab_ are taken from Dwarrow Scholar, (Ex. Yavanna’s name is Kaminzabdûna in Khuzdul)

\- “‘Smaug has not been seen for sixty years,’” says Thorin Oakenshield in AUJ. But Smaug took over Erebor almost a century and a half previously; why exactly was he seen six decades before the quest? What was going on? In this AU, Smaug was awakened by Iron Hill dwarves walking through the front door. Stupid, perhaps, but they were the equivalent of teenagers. Smaug, infuriated, set a dragon-curse on the hoard.

\- Thikil'abnith (steel-stone) is a kind of stone that can be mined only inside Erebor. It is as bright as steel, but lighter; used mostly for decorations and nothing of importance.

\- Iglishmêk is split into three types: miner’s, battle, and ritual. Miner and battle Iglishmêk are fairly similar, being only adapted to each area of work as necessary, but ritual Iglishmêk uses large, sweeping motions. A paragraph cut from the text that describes ritual Iglishmêk fairly well is: _The formal dances, not the half-drunk jigs most often used. No- the old dances, the formal ones, where two rows of dwarves moved in unison, folding fingers and arms and legs in figures that should be impossible; graceful and grounded and beautiful beyond compare._

\- Blacklocks and Stonefoots correspond to the south-Caucasian population in our world; Ironfists and Stiffbeards to China. Because Blacklocks/Stonefoots were in the southern reaches of the Orocarni mountain ranges, as the Turkish population is today south of the Caucases; and the Ironfists and Stiffbeards were beyond even them, as the Chinese population was beyond the Himalayan mountains to the Western world.

**Marriage ceremonies:**

_\- Ishmerafran’mudtul_ is the common ceremony that dwarves perform to get married.

 _\- Thandmesem-mudtul_ (bracelets of the heart) are the equivalent of rings, to humans. They are hand-crafted by the bride and groom, and are, essentially, bracelets of gold that have no clasp; they signify that the love the bride and groom hold has no beginning and no end. Carvings on the _thandmesem-mudtul_ are the only decoration allowed, and are unique to clan, family, personal ability, etc. Every married dwarf has this. Were Bilbo/Thorin to marry, they would have this as well.

 _\- Ishmerafran’amrab_ is the ceremony done by the King of the Longbeards and his direct heirs.

\- There is a tradition in all dwarven clans that all kings can marry twice: once for political gain, and once for personal love. Firla Flamesword, upon cursing the line of Durin, was petitioned for a reduction, and she said that she would give it in the form of the Queen; when an innocent soul (Queen) is bonded to the ‘guilty’ soul (King) the King will not suffer from gold-madness. The Queen’s soul forms a buffer.

\- This ceremony is the ceremony of the soul. Instead of bracelets, there are daggers. The Vala actually get involved in this ceremony.

**Nomenclature:**

\- Dwarven nomenclature is basically traced by the stem of the word, paternally if one is male and maternally if one is female.

\- By this, I mean Kili and Fili’s father is Vili; the stem is -ili. Sifa’s mother’s name is Glifa, and the stem is -ifa.

\- Durin’s line has the suffix -in. An exception to this is Thror, whose father- Dain- promises his wife to name all their children after her, and not himself. Thror has two brothers: Fror and Gror. Gror established a colony in the Iron Hills; Thror remained in Erebor.

\- Introductions of dwarves are done by the father if one is male and mother if one is female. There can be a preference shown to a live parent if one wishes, or to a previous ancestor if one is an orphan.

Ex: Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror.

Ex: Sifa, daughter of Glifa, Heir of Ferya.

Ex. Fili, son of Dis.

**Population imbalance:**

\- Tolkien talks about a population imbalance amongst the dwarves: only a third of the race is female. This is addressed in this AU as not a simple handwave-magical-society thing (because that’s really _not_ how genetics works; people are born male/female as coded, and it isn’t like two-thirds of the sperm are going to somehow, magically, be male), but rather a derivation of similar imbalances found in human society.

\- The only time humans have experienced such imbalances are through deliberate, longterm work: see India/China population imbalances. If you’ve got an iron stomach, look at female infanticide and foeticide. India had to _ban ultrasounds_ because people would _deliberately kill girl children._ Seriously. There’s a law and everything.

\- In this AU, dwarven families mean a lot of things. Miners’ bloodlines birth miners, and healers’ bloodlines birth healers, and stone-singers’ bloodlines birth stone-singers. Except, after millennia of selective breeding, stone-singer bloodlines also birthed more girls, because girls made better stone-singers; as other bloodlines birthed more boys.

\- NOTE: Girls made better stone-singers because they didn’t make up a giant percentage of oathed warriors. (I’ve got so _many ideas_ about this particular topic OMG I’m… really… invested… in the existence of a genocide to establish this.)

\- Until Durin III killed them all, and made sure all the other dwarven clans did so as well, and led the entire race to basically demolish more than eighty percent of their female population. The dwarves are actually recovering at a far higher rate than normal, really: almost up to 33% after sinking so low as 15%, particularly considering their longer lifespans. One does have to keep in mind that the _male_ population’s also been decimated in the war against Sauron at the end of the Second Age, so it’s not as bad- but still, it’s nowhere near as equal as the other races.

 

**VII: HEADCANONS ON OTHER RACES:**

\- Elves introduce each other by naming both parents. (Ex. Tauriel, daughter of Tirnel and Randaer)

\- Hobbits introduce each other by last name only. (Ex. Bilbo Baggins)

\- All elves are taught Quenya, even if it isn’t their first language. Tauriel uses it only in the most formal situations.

\- Elves and men, made by Eru, cannot procreate with dwarves, made by Mahal. Their genetic makeup is drastically different. Thus, Kili/Tauriel cannot have children. Elves and men are both made by Eru: they can have children together, as shown by Arwen/Aragorn, etc.

 

**VIII: OTHER:**

\- Gumdrop milk is the blood flower in our world, firemoss is the California poppy, and queensfoil is entirely fictional.

\- There are no men in this tale to refute/accept the result of these plants on foreign physiology. So, to anyone reading this text that might be interested in eating or using them for any purposes thereof, I repeat: you do not know how humans will react to it.

\- No idea if the _Lay of Leithien_ has anything similar to the conversation that Tauriel narrates in Ch. 3. I could be utterly wrong. We’ll see.

 

**XI: CITATIONS:**

\- Note that while these are the citations that I am aware of, there can be a few quotes interspersed in the entirety of the fic that I haven't managed to talk about. If anyone catches it just message me and I'll add it to this list.

\- “Good done in the name of evil…” (Ch. 1); paraphrase from Vathara’s ATLA fanfic, Embers.

\- “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night” (Ch. 3); phrase from poetry of Sarah Williams

\- Titles of chapters come from personally translated pre-colonial Indian poetry:

_“In the depths of my blood/ there is a kind of hope/ deeper than the bones of the sky/ strong as the springs of the sea/ do you think I am felled?”_

_“This is a love I cannot undo/ I’ve chosen you a thousand times/ Were you to lead me to heaven I’d come/ But if you chose hell I’d burn as well/ Eyes open for the rest of eternity”_

_“The sun has gone dim, you say/ but I assure you, it will shine again”_

 

**X: DICTIONARY:**

Amad: mother  
Nebaguabanu: brush of stone  
Nadad: Brother  
Nunur’amrâb: other-one; of-my-soul  
Morwinyon (Q): Arcturus; glint in the dark  
Binamsâl: Bad luck  
Khi’nututredel: One of the last heir; more specifically, Kili’s One, or Tauriel  
Nunur’aklum: other-royalty; those not of royal blood  
Redêl: Crown prince  
Hantalye, Aran’Erebor: Thank you, King of Erebor (Q)  
Khabbûna: Forge-lady  
Meldir: Friend (S)  
Araran: Kingless (S)  
Etementa: Banished (S)  
Aran’Valinor: King of Valinor; Manwe (S)  
Fëa: spirit/soul (S)  
Harasul: Flame  
Ibkin: Awake!

Murdu'shurel: dead-smoke; smoke from cremations  
Yusthel: partner of all partners  
Mamahdûn: Manwe  
Nun'umudtu: twin of my heart  
Aklum: royalty  
Emel: mother (S)  
Bingurthu: without ambition  
Redel: prince  
Thikil'abnith: steel-stone (Erebor is famous for a kind of shiny stone that looks like steel. This is also a headcanon of mine.)  
Lalkhûn: fool  
Nadadith: little brother  
Ishmerafrân'mudtul: ceremony of the heart; common wedding ceremony done by dwarves  
Harasul-zagr: Flame-sword  
Ishmerafrân'amrâb: ceremony of the soul; wedding ceremony done only by royalty  
Thandmesem-mudtul: bracelets of the heart; evidence of Ishmerafrân'mudtul  
Amrâb-zagr: soul-sword; evidence of Ishmerafrân'amrâb  
Khi: One  
Usahu: Ulmo  
Khebbêl: forge of all forges  
Anaburhel: warnings from the heart  
Lasbelingwaew: wanderers; autumn-wind (S)  
Sulladad: Eru Ilúvatar

Iskhi: look  
Khi’redêl: One of the heir; Sifa  
Binaklum: without royalty  
Shazara: silence  
Zagr: sword  
Damm'mudtul: heartblood  
Nin gur: my heart  
Amrab: soul  
Herenya: blessed, wealthy, fortunate (Q)

 


End file.
